Homage To Joe Firmage*

Wo gehen wir denn hin? Immer nach Hause.
– Novalis**

A house must come to its milk,
though it be made to see red rats
in a Magdalen laundry.
Up from the squalid plain of Sham.
To what bourn may it reach,
the pale causeway of the dead?
Do those departed watch the end of war?
Swim skyward through sleep
past undulate fish jungles in the sea,
or, standing on the promises,
bleed honey at death's door,
under the double nipple.
      Join silent dairies in deep space,
      gaze back for a lost blue marble.
 

* For Who Joe Firmage may be, see “Lost In Space,”
by Jeff Goodell, “Rolling Stone” #809 (April 1, 1999)

** “Where Are We Going? Always Homeward.”
– Novalis